December 23, 2020 - The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and its partner, the National Public Radio (NPR), have released findings from their second joint survey on the state of the national coronavirus contact tracing workforce.
The survey finds that there are now 70,538 contact tracers working across the United States, a more than sixfold increase since the pandemic began. The survey also found that the 33 state and territorial health departments that responded had added nearly 20,000 tracers since the last survey, which was conducted in October 2020.
These results make clear that "health departments are still invested in contact tracing," said Crystal Watson, DrPH, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Speaking to NPR, Dr. Watson, who oversaw the survey, said "They're trying really hard to keep up as best they can with the cases that they're seeing."
Key takeaways from the December 2020 survey include: